Reviewing Marjoe (1972, 2006)

by J. Michael Utzinger

Howdy
neighbor. The Lord Bless you. I'm in town to give the devil two black eyes.

It takes me a while to catch up on the good stuff I
see on this blog, and I finally took Randall Stephens’s
advice and watched the documentary Marjoe,
which follows the last year of evangelist Marjoe Gortner's career. Filmed in 1971, the documentary, directed by Sarah
Kernochan and Howard Smith, won an Academy Award for best documentary film in
1972. It was rereleased in 2006 once
Kernochan bought the rights to the film from a company in receivership. (She recounts this interesting story in her own
blog.) My memory of Gortner was as the lion tamer in
the Circus of the Stars in the 1980s; although, I will admit it took me a while
to figure this out. He looked so
familiar I had to figure out how I knew him, and I knew it wasn't from a
revival in the early 1970s.

The film is really worth viewing, but I must admit
that I finished watching this film with a feeling of ambivalence. The conceit of the documentary is that Marjoe
is a fraud by his own admission. His
early career began around age four, after he was baptized in the Holy Spirit. His father, in one scene in the documentary,
recounts that he began to speak in heavenly languages while taking a bath. Gortner recounts at one tent revival that God
called him to preach as a four year young boy.
But what can I do Lord, I am just
a boy? He could preach even as a
five year old. He could become the
world’s youngest evangelist.

At age five,
Marjoe memorized the entire Episcopal wedding service and married a couple in
California. Between ages six and eight,
we see film clips of him in a white suit preaching as if he were Billy
Sunday. These sermons
are really fun to hear. All I could
think was this boy is a Holy Ghost Wunderkind.

But the viewer is not allowed to become too
impressed. Gortner tells the camera that
he "never thought he was a miracle."
He explains that his mother forced him to memorize his routines and
physically abused him if he made mistakes.
His parents trained him to use hand motions and body language as he
preached, and his mother even taught him code phrases to cue him how to handle
the audience, especially when they were ripe to give the largest offering
possible. By his own estimation his
parents raked in several millions of dollars during his ten years as a child
evangelist. Marjoe is back preaching
after a hiatus, not because he believes his own message but because he needs to
earn a living.

In the beginning of the documentary, Gortner
explains to the film crew how to blend in during the revival rather than be the
object of their witnessing. "Cut
the locks." "No
smoking." "Keep it in your pants
... I never take out a girl from a church.”
(He apparently saved that for airline stewardesses). And if
anyone should ask a crewmember whether he or she was saved, Gortner counsels
them to reply confidently that “I am washed in the same blood as you.”

The question the crew asks him in the beginning of
the film what will happen when "they" find out? The camera becomes his confessional:
"Well, I hope that they will see it's not necessary to look to some person
to, like, jerk you off ... to put your belief in."

The viewer is left haunted by the crew’s question
throughout the rest of the film. We know
good and well that Gortner is a fraud—the crew captures an appalling scene of
Marjoe singing “Jesus is so good to me,” while counting the evening’s earnings on
his hotel bed. Like a magician, who has
broken his professional code, he exposes the tricks of the trade. The evangelists “that are successful are
business men, like Madison Avenue P.R. men”—and women, the film makes quite
clear. Sister Taylor exhorts worshippers
to “prove God” by giving money to evangelists.
Another revivalist preaches that success and Cadillacs are a proof of
God’s blessing and approval. A Dallas
minister and family dine on steak and talk about their land holdings in
Brazil. Others are masters of print and
radio. Marjoe recalls finding his
gimmick: a sweat-activated ink that he painted on his forehead in the shape of
a cross to astound his audience while he preached.

What will happen when "they" find
out? Them. I never quite got past these people who
inhabit the background of the film. The
film was about Marjoe, but the film crew and Gortner are clearly haunted by them too. They are unnamed. They paradoxically preach and speak of the
Spirit and spiritual things, but respond with such religious physicality. They pray for a touch of the divine
grace. They dance with joy. They fall slain in the Spirit. Yet their faith seems to transcend other
things so physical. Their services are
notably multiethnic, and gender does not seem to be barrier for ministries left
only to men in other churches. They are
portrayed as religious anachronisms, yet they seem, in other ways so ahead of
their time, even compared with more theologically liberal denominations. Marjoe reveals the power they have over him:
“If I was going to pick a religion, of Christian types of religion, if I had to
go into one of them … thank God I don’t have to … I’d pick the Pentecostal
faith because the music is just great and the people are interesting. They’re kind of weird, but it’s OK.” He acts
like he is not already gone into a religion. He claims he likes their faith, but deplores
their hell. Even so, Gortner self-reflectively
tells the camera, “Religion is a drug.
Can God deliver a religion addict?” Who has bewitched whom?

But Marjoe, in his own mind, defrauds them
anyway. The film-makers win an Academy
Award using them as well. “I sort of
like to think that I’m bad but not evil,” Gortner confesses. “I am a hype, but not a bad hype.” Perhaps this sums up the film best. There are really interesting things happening
in Marjoe, but often the most
interesting things are often underneath, beside, and despite the hype of its
protagonist.

Comments

Nice interpretation of this film. I was thrilled to discover Marjoe in time to include a discussion of it alongside Superstar, Godspell, and Johnny Cash's Gospel Road in my book No Sympathy for the Devil. Definitely an interesting moment in the overlap of American Christianity and the movies.